Team

Hampleton combines technology sector expertise as well as banking experience to build the best transaction teams in the industry

In addition to proven deal makers and professionals with significant equity transaction experience, the partners, directors, and other staff members have over 200 years of operational experience in the technology industry. The analysts are some of the most qualified in banking and Hampleton uniquely utilizes Sector Principals, industry experts actively operating in their sectors bringing in real-time market insights, contacts and domain knowledge.

This extraordinary combination of experience, expertise and focus brings our clients massive advantage in their M&A process, dramatically increasing the likelihood of success as well as providing for the best transaction possible.

Miro Parizek / Principal Partner

Miro Parizek established Hampleton in 2013 with a group of fellow deal makers and technology industry entrepreneurs, uniting hands-on industry expertise and seasoned transaction experience together for the optimal M&A advisory.

Miro has been providing M&A advisory services to the technology industry since the pre-dot.com era and has managed scores of transactions supporting privately-held sellers and publicly-traded companies, ranging from 20 to over 2,000 employees.

Miro has 30 years of experience in the software and IT industry. Prior to his M&A career, which began in 1998, Miro founded and ran three software and IT related firms in the ’80s and ’90s, including a leading international software vendor, North American Software. He was a founding member and, for over a decade, treasurer of the German Software Association, which was merged with the country’s multi-media association, creating today’s national association for digital economy (BVDW).

Miro is an avid skier, hiker and enjoys time with his wife and young twins.

Miro has degrees in International Finance from the Wharton School of Business and in Computer Science from the Moore School of Engineering. In addition to his English mother tongue, Miro speaks fluent German after having lived in Germany for over twenty years.

Frank Berger / Partner

Frank Berger is a managing director at Hampleton and is based in southern Germany.

Sometime after selling his company to Systematics AG, which was later acquired by NYSE, listed EDS, Frank began working as an advisor with a US-based boutique M&A firm. This was born out of Frank’s desire to leverage the experience he gained over four decades in the IT industry. Frank’s merger and acquisition experience cuts across many IT industry sectors including BPM, CRM, IT services, ECM & DMS, transaction processing, mobile applications, RFID, security and simulation.

Prior to his advisory career, Frank worked as software development manager, as MD at Digital Equipment, as CEO at Electronic 2000 AG and as MD at Sequent Computer Systems. Later on, he provided strategy consulting to several young, emerging software firms.

In 1989 he founded IQproducts GmbH, which developed into one of Germany’s leading full service providers in the area of backup-restore solution. The company was sold in 2000, when it reached a size of about DM40 million in revenues.

Frank holds a Masters Degree in Mathematics from Technical University Berlin and completed the Senior Executive Program at Stanford Graduate Business School.

Jo Goodson / Managing Director

Jo Goodson is Managing Director of Hampleton’s London office. She is an accomplished tech entrepreneur with over 25 years’ experience in the industry.

Jo began her career in the industry during the mid-90s when she joined Broderbund as their second European employee and grew revenues from $0 to $24m in three years. She went on to co-found MediaGold, which, with further offices and bases in France, Italy, Spain and Germany, created an entity providing US software publishers access to the European market place. After four years of solid growth and profitability, she sold the business in 2003 to Avanquest—a Paris-based Euronext-listed company—where she served as their managing director responsible for the UK and the Nordic region. After leaving she was heavily involved in their acquisition efforts in northern Europe.

Since then, Jo has advised and invested in a range of software and internet companies such as Ariadne Capital, an investment and advisory firm where Jo also acted as interim COO; Indigo Pearl, a games industry PR company; Mediatonic; and Playmob. She is also a non-executive director of Six to Start, who recently released the highly successful iPhone app, “Zombies, Run!”.

Axel Brill / Director

Axel Brill is based in northern Germany and has over 25 years’ experience in the software industry.

Axel co-founded Hoffmann Datentechnik in the late ’80s and as its CEO built it out to become Germany’s leading workforce management (WFM) solution provider for the retail sector. He sold the company in 2006 to Torex PLC. After helping with the integration, Axel headed off for a three-year sailing tour of half the planet where he photographed undersea wildlife. Following this, he invested in a Danish WFM SaaS vendor and worked as a regional director for the world’s leading WFM vendor, Kronos. Axel also owns a German franchise of Executives Online, offering a broad range of interim management services and project managers.

Axel joined Hampleton as a European director and covers all its sectors with particular attention to information management, enterprise applications, including time and attendance (T&A), WFM, and logistics and vertical applications.

Axel began his career by applying his management education to a family-operated automobile distributorship, moving on to a sales position at a data-processing company, and shortly thereafter co-founded his first software company devoted to the sales of software for professional craftsmen.

David Riemenschneider / Director

David is our automotive sector expert. From Detroit, David has been in and around the industry working on several continents for nearly 30 years in leading roles at OEMs, T1s and business services suppliers.

Most recently, David has consulted a wide range of businesses in developing M&A strategy in the automotive IoT/M2M and data analytics space, while also working in an interim role to develop a telematics-based fault-driven vehicle service strategy for a global T1 supplier. David has also consulted on several M&A projects in Europe, US and India. David has a strong background and is well connected with many European private equity firms.

Previously, David worked for Ford in the US and Europe in a number of commercial and technical positions, including running the service and repair aftersales business in Europe. After this, David worked with global OEMs in the aftersales business services & IT sector, delivering managed data solutions and SaaS platforms as the CEO of the Clifford Thames Group.

Henrik Jeberg / Director

Henrik, based in Silicon Valley, is a veteran of the IT industry for over 20 years. He began his career as a CIO and project manager for massive ERP implementations.

In 1995, Henrik moved to the vendor side when he joined Navision (now Microsoft Business Solutions), where he helped develop Navision’s international business as Channel Manager in Denmark, Business Development Director in France, Managing Director in Australia and finally Regional Managing Director responsible for the entire Asian region, based out of Singapore.

After seven years of operational experience on the vendor side, Henrik had a stint at Gartner in Paris as their director of market and business strategy, before returning to Copenhagen to become the CIO at the Danish Ministry of Finance, leading the entire horizontal government IT complex. In 2007, he became a non-executive director at Omada. Finally, as Divisional Director he headed up SAS Institute’s Information Management Division out of Copenhagen, working with early Big Data and Advanced Analytics Technologies.

Since moving to California in 2012, Henrik has co-founded a mobile e-shopping platform and a company focusing on strategy and international business development.

Jonathan Simnett / Director

Jonathan has been involved in the enterprise technology business for over three decades, managing and turning around existing business and helping management and their investors in fast-growth technology segments to grow, manage change, enter markets, transfer technologies, acquire, merge and sell.

He holds a Master’s degree in Science and Technology Policy from The University of Manchester, attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business and blogs on technology innovation, marketing and management at “The World According to WestFour”.

Jan Eiben / Director

Jan is based in Germany. His career over the last 15 years includes extensive experience in international M&A projects of various industries on the buy and sell sides. In addition, he also worked as a management consultant advising corporations, family businesses and start-ups in strategy and organizational development projects as well as succession management.

Jan holds a PhD and MSc in Business Administration and Economics from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management with exchange semesters in the USA and Canada. He is fluent in German (native), English and French.

Michel Annink / Regional Director

Michel is Regional Director Sweden. His 25+ years experience spans three continents and multiple industries. He is based in Stockholm and advises clients in e-mobility, automotive, IT and other sectors with a very high degree of change and innovation.

Prior to joining the Hampleton team, Michel was at NEVS (a.k.a. Saab cars) where he was responsible for the company’s transformation to a global provider of mobility solutions. Before NEVS, he spent several years at Salesforce where he held the role of Vice President Nordics, Benelux and Emerging Markets and worked directly with enterprise clients and partners on business and technology transformations. Earlier, Michel held multiple sales and marketing leadership positions during his twelve year tenure at Microsoft Corporation including Worldwide Managing Director Retail, based from the company’s HQ in Seattle, USA, and Senior Director for Microsoft’s consumer division in the Nordic region.

Michel loves photography and cooking, and is passionately curious about how technology can benefit people, businesses and society at large. Michel moved with his wife and three children from The Netherlands to Sweden in 2001 and speaks Swedish, Dutch, English and some German and French.

Ralph Huebner / Sector Principal

Ralph Hübner is based in Munich. He is a leading expert in digital marketing, regularly published in the trade press as well as a presenter at industry events as an author, speaker and host.

Ralph has over a decade experience in consulting and has specialized in online strategy. He has advised on building e-commerce solutions, selective distribution concepts and effective brand protection on the Internet. Prior to joining the Hampleton team, Ralph was a co-founder of a strategy consultancy advising clients on how to develop and improve their online strategies, predominantly supporting market leading manufacturers in consumer and b2b markets. Ralph has extensive experience with all relevant tools and techniques to improve online success: brand positioning, utilisation of social media and e-commerce performance solutions through onpage and offpage measures.

Ralph is also an active investor in start-ups focusing on advanced digital innovations such as big/smart data management, virtual/augmented reality or UX/strategy by design.

Ralph began his career in the international fashion industry. Later on, while working in both consulting and different industries, he focused on international expansion in markets such as the United States, most EU markets, Russia, India and China.

Peter Baumgartner / Sector Principal

Peter is our industry sector expert.

Based in Germany for the most part of his career, Peter has been in management and consulting roles in the European manufacturing industry for over 20 years, with a strong focus on the automotive Tier 1/2 environment.

Peter has gained significant experience in strategic development, international expansion, development of new technologies, production organisation development as well as pre-M&A studies and M&A support.

Peter began his career in consumer products supply as a process engineer before joining again after university for a PhD. Peter holds a degree of mechanical engineering from the technical university of Munich and a PhD from the technical university of Karlsruhe.

After having lived in France for the past eight years he is now fluent in French, as well as English and his mother tongue, German.

Nav Sunner / Sector Principal

Nav Sunner has worked in the video games industry since the late ’90s.

He has acted as in-house counsel and external legal advisor to a variety of companies in the industry including Codemasters, GREE and Microsoft.

Over the years, his career has taken him into additional roles focused on strategy, management and business development. Ultimately, this combined experience has led him to set up “Navatron”, providing business and legal services for companies and individuals connected with video games.

Heiko Garrelfs / Sector Principal

As a technology enthusiast Heiko has had the opportunity to witness and participate in the technology surveys of recent years over years in various roles and in various companies – most recently as a technology consultant at Siemens AG.

After leaving Siemens AG, Heiko founded and advised various start-ups. Heiko works with his own company in the VR/AR environment to implement projects.

Mike Woods / Sector Principal

Mike is Sector Principal for Fintech & Payments and is based in London, UK.

He has over 30 years’ international experience and has operated at board level across global businesses, spanning startups to multi-billion public and private companies in the Banking, Retail, Fintech and Payments industries.

He was responsible for e-commerce and payments at Natwest Bank, and later worked at Royal Bank of Scotland, with over 1,000 people working for him innovating digital and payment solutions.

He has founded such companies as Aconite Technology, a VC-backed software solutions business, and as CEO grew the company internationally into 22 countries, across the USA, Europe and Africa, selling to a PLC in December 2014.

Mike has significant M&A and corporate finance experience, particularly in the Fintech and Payments industries in addition to acquisition integration expertise in large corporates such as Natwest/RBS bank.

Charles Rim / Senior Adviser

Charles Rim is a Seoul-based Internet industry veteran and digital marketing executive. In parallel to his capacity as senior advisor at Hampleton Partners, Charles is a venture partner at Athena Technology Ventures and is the managing director of Korea and Southeast Asia at Tapjoy, a mobile advertising and monetization platform which he has built into the leader in mobile-incentivized ad platforms in the APAC region.

Charles gained extensive experience in the expansion of the internet in the Asian-Pacific region as a corporate finance executive. At Google, he was Head of M&A APAC and from 2006 to 2011 led all deals by Google in the region (ex-China). Previously, he was a Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Yahoo Korea, and CFO of Korea Thrunet, Korea’s first broadband network and enterprise solution provider.

Prior to his corporate finance career, Charles was an investment banker (Credit Agricole Group, CISA) in the Asian-Pacific region, mainly transacting in M&A, IPOs, and equity markets funding. Charles started his career as a lawyer in Connecticut and New York.

Charles graduated with a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983, and received his J.D. from the Emory University School of Law in 1986. He enjoys the great outdoors and has a particular passion for angling… in all waters.

John Stallabrass / Financial Consultant

John is a Financial Consultant at Hampleton. He is a UK chartered accountant by profession and has been CFO for blue chips and SMEs. He has participated in numerous transactions, as both vendor and advisor, particularly in the automotive, technology and engineering industries.

Anton Røthe / Associate

Anton is an associate at Hampleton Partners, having joined in the summer of 2016. He provides support to deal leads through all stages of the transaction process in addition to leading the analyst team at Hampleton.

Prior to joining Hampleton, Anton completed an MSc in Corporate Finance at Cass Business School in London, as well as two years of professional experience with Excel modelling, data analysis, FX spot trading, and project management at Loomis FX in Oslo.

Nicholas Milligan / Senior Analyst

Nicholas is a senior analyst at Hampleton Partners, having joined in the summer of 2015. Prior to this, he attended the London School of Economics, from which he holds an LLB in Laws. Nicholas enjoys industry research, financial analysis, and trying to stay on top of all the exciting technology coming out of every corner of the world, particularly in automotive, IoT, and high-tech applications.

In his free time, Nicholas enjoys hiking, skiing, mixing cocktails, and learning new languages.

Tim Stemkens / Analyst

Tim joined Hampleton Partners as an analyst in early 2017 and supports the team at all points during the transaction process. Prior to joining Hampleton, Tim obtained an MSc from HEC Paris and completed 13 months’ worth of internship experience at ABN Amro in Amsterdam, and Credit Agricole CIB in Tokyo. Tim speaks Dutch, English, French and German.